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The last day that students remaining at the college — roughly 70 in total — can stay on campus is May 31, according to an email sent to those students on Monday by Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor. However, Taylor wrote that some students may be approved to stay beyond that date “in cases of exceptional personal circumstances.”
The following statement was sent to members of the college administration, as well as the Board of Trustees, on May 8. Signatories are listed at the bottom of this piece. The piece has been lightly edited in accordance with The Campus’ style guidelines. The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, causing death, sickness, stress and isolation. The parallel economic impact has likewise been enormous. As businesses have shut down, some have chosen to furlough or fire their workers, which has, in turn, led to massive increases in unemployment and economic hardships. Middlebury has not been immune to the consequences of the virus. Some faculty, staff and students have fallen ill, we’ve lost loved ones, and our work lives have been quickly disrupted and transformed. At the college, there will be greater expenses than revenues this fiscal year and a projected deficit in the tens of millions of dollars next year. What is the best way to deal with this crisis? The Middlebury chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) believes that the solutions we should adopt should reflect the values the college has long espoused in its public statements and deeds. One place to view the college’s values is through the people it chooses as recipients of honorary degrees. Each year Middlebury College chooses an Honorary Degree Recipient whose aspirations and achievements are meant to serve as role models for our graduating seniors. In 1996, Middlebury conferred an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters on Aaron Feuerstein. Feuerstein was the owner of Malden Mills, the producer of Polartec fleece. The company’s factory was destroyed by the largest industrial fire in Massachusetts. He could have collected the insurance money and retired to a comfortable life, leaving his former employees scrambling to find other jobs. Instead, Feuerstein vowed not only to rebuild the plant, but to continue to pay all his employees their wages and benefits during the construction process. Could Middlebury follow Feuerstein’s example, one it so visibly honored, as it works through a temporary period of disruption caused by the virus? We believe that it can and that it should. Here’s how. The AAUP plan: Stop endowment hoarding and create real transparency and faculty governance now There are adequate funds in Middlebury’s endowment to get us through a 12- to 18-month period without firing staff and reducing the compensation — salaries, healthcare, sabbatical leaves, parental leaves, etc. — of those who work here. The small additional draw down from the endowment would have little long-term negative impact on the institution while providing much needed support for its loyal employees. There is no principle of financial management, no wisdom of corporate governance or tenet of economics that would argue against an increased draw from the endowment in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Yet, all the models Senior Administration is sharing with faculty groups only allow for a 5% draw from the endowment. In reality, we have the ability to use at least 20% of the endowment to confront this crisis. This includes unrestricted funds, the Trustee-designated funds, and funds designated for capital building projects. Increasing the amount we draw from the endowment to at least 7% would allow us to maintain current compensation levels while weathering the crisis. We propose the college pursue this path instead of widespread austerity. The so-called “five percent rule,” which has its origins in the laudable desire to preserve intergenerational equity, should itself be reconsidered. There is no ethical reason the current generation of Middlebury students, staff and faculty should bear all of the burdens. In fact, Middlebury has used up to 7.1% of the endowment as recently as 2001/02. Further, the particular choice of five percent, which delineates “surplus” from “deficit,” is itself a matter of some debate: intended to preserve the real value of endowments, there is evidence that it has allowed institutions to “endowment hoard,” and at least one New York Times op-ed has called for an eight percent rule which, if adopted, would transform the conversation on our campus. In this moment of extraordinary upheaval, we must utilize our resources to support the extraordinary education we offer here at Middlebury. The budget challenges we now confront are not a choice between prudent finance and community values. Rather, we believe that the college must choose a financial path forward that honors the commitments it has made to faculty, staff and students — and to the values it so often endorses in public. To help ensure that happens, we propose the creation of a collective bargaining process that will allow faculty and staff to negotiate with the administration over compensation and the financial future of the college. A democratic workplace means we must elect a body that is trained and committed to this specific bargaining task during this unique time. We need faculty advocates with a seat at the table who are treated as equals, not merely an advisory board. Such a bargaining committee would have full access to the college’s financial planning resources, and would be able to consult with the larger faculty and staff before big decisions are set in stone. We suggest that the AAUP seed such an organization, as it does at over 500 colleges across the country. We are concerned about more than compensation, but the well-being of the institution and its future reputation. If faculty compensation is cut — as proposed in all of Senior Leadership’s projections, including the best-case scenario where students return in the fall — faculty will be forced to recalibrate their time and energies. Already, there is precarity among our community members who are supporting their families on one salary or who are living dual lives in order to maintain careers alongside their academic partners. Less money will translate to lower productivity because, necessarily, faculty will find alternative ways to generate income, such as freelance work, to pay their rent and mortgages and to support their families. All of this means that our students will get less: fewer faculty with engaged research agendas, less faculty time and energy, and fewer faculty who feel they are being treated fairly by an institution that claims to put education first. The administration talks of “the Middlebury Way,” and relies on the rhetoric of “family” as they ask us to sacrifice for our jobs. This line of reasoning uses our own best intentions against us even as it obscures the reality that Middlebury is a nonprofit entity that has generated nearly a billion dollars in a sheltered endowment. We must ask: what is this money for if not to secure the well-being of the workers and students who make up the Middlebury community? Middlebury’s future gets decided now What we do now will define the future reality of working at the college. Research in the American Economic Review shows that when endowments experience negative shocks, hiring and benefits are taken away. When endowments experience positive shocks, these are not returned. We need full transparency and collaboration between our stated financial planners and the faculty and staff. To make decisions while only informing a small portion of the faculty and staff — some of whom were appointed by the administration or elected for unrelated committees — undermines faculty governance. Decisions about capital improvements, real estate acquisitions or even “brokering” a dorm building in Monterey, Calif. should not be made without the entire faculty being able to see the actual long-term costs of such projects. As a community, we must ask ourselves what we value most — and act accordingly. Our AAUP chapter believes that high-quality education and maintaining our fair compensation for labor should be our primary concerns. We need a financial plan that reflects our mission and will rise to the occasion, not set us back a decade. We look forward to implementing such a plan alongside our faculty, staff and administrative colleagues — one that utilizes our endowment responsibly and ethically, to ensure a vibrant future for the college and those who work and learn here. Signed, Rachael Miyung Joo, American Studies Marybeth E. Nevins, Anthropology Ellen Oxfeld, Anthropology Peter Matthews, Economics Andrea Robbett, Economics Tanya Byker, Economics Julia Berazneva, Economics Jeffrey Carpenter, Economics Carolyn Craven, Economics Akhil Rao, Economics Tara L. Affolter, Education Studies Antonia Losano, English & American Literature Yumna Siddiqi, English & American Literature Marion Wells, English & American Literature Rebecca Kneale Gould, Environmental Studies Erin J. Davis, Film & Media Studies David Miranda-Hardy, Film & Media Culture William Poulin-Deltour, French & Francophone Studies Laurie Essig, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Hemangini Gupta, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Catharine Wright, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies and Writing Program Carly Thomsen, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Natalie Eppelsheimer, German Florence A. Feiereisen, German Guntram H. Herb, Geograpy Tamar Mayer, Geography Carrie Anderson, History of Art & Architecture Edward A. Vazquez, History of Art & Architecture Febe Armanios, History Maggie Clinton, History Darién J. Davis, History Joyce Mao, History Jacob Tropp, History Max Ward, History Linda White, Japanese Studies Enrique Garcia, Luso-Hispanic Studies Gloria Estela González Zenteno, Luso-Hispanic Studies Patricia Saldarriaga, Luso-Hispanic Studies Luis Hernán Castañeda, Luso-Hispanic Studies Irina Feldman, Luso-Hispanic Studies Fernando S. Rocha, Luso-Hispanic Studies Priscilla S. Bremser, Mathematics Michael Olinick, Mathematics Frank Swenton, Mathematics Kemi Fuentes-George, Political Science Justin Doran, Religion Matthew Lawrence, Sociology Jamie McCallum, Sociology Linus Owens, Sociology Rebecca Tiger, Sociology James Chase Sanchez, Writing & Rhetoric Hector Vila, Writing & Rhetoric The signatories are members of the Middlebury branch of the AAUP.
Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of assault. “The following is an undocumented paper which does not necessarily express the views of the College Administration,” the letter began. “The topic is Contraception. Don’t expect to find much practical information on the subject in Egbert Starr Library, because I’ve looked and there isn’t any, aside from the Time Magazine report on pills.” It bore the title “Honi Soyt Qui Mal Pence,” a maxim written in Old French which translates roughly to “shamed be the person who thinks evil of it.” The letter went on to detail how conception occurs, different methods of birth control, their effectiveness and how to access them — on trying to get a prescription for the pill, it wrote: “go to Burlington or Rutland and borrow a plain gold or silver ring from someone, invent a married name and place of residence (but don’t tell any more of your “story” than they ask for and keep your cool.)” — and what to do if the reader believed she was pregnant. It included a comprehensive illustration of abortion methods as well as ways to attempt to obtain an illegal abortion. The letter arrived in the first-year women’s campus mailboxes packaged with one male condom. Martha McCravey ’71 was on the other end of the mailbox. “I remember reading it and going back to the dorm and talking about it with a couple other girls, we were all sort of ‘Wow! Where did this come from? And who wrote this? And what does this mean?’” McCravey said. “My biggest reaction was that my parents must never ever see or hear about this. Because I won't be coming back to Middlebury.” She was shocked when Olivier revealed the letter at their 45th reunion. As far as she had known, everyone had “either hid it or burned it or thrown it away because [they] were so freaked out by it.” McCravey grew up in a family with doctors, so she knew about birth control. But it was still not something she was accustomed to thinking about in the context of her own life. During her time at Middlebury, McCravey knew female students who tried to obtain birth control prescriptions. They went to the student health center, but Middlebury’s Medical Director at the time, Dr. William Parton, for whom Parton Health Center is named, refused to write them prescriptions. She knew a few students in her sophomore and junior years who got abortions. “I think the college would have been just as happy for everybody to get an abortion and nobody to be pregnant walking around,” she said. “That was saving face.” Unlike McCravey, now-Writer-in-Residence Emerita Julia Alvarez ’71 did not receive “the letter.” She was a transfer student who arrived at Middlebury in the fall of 1969. “This is the first I hear of that letter,” Alvarez wrote in an email to The Campus. “Both hilarious, astonishing, confusing, and painful to read — how little we knew back then and how few were the options! I feel for the pressures on us as young women with ownership of our own bodies still in the future.” When Alvarez convinced her father to let her transfer from Connecticut College for Women, she conveniently omitted the fact that Middlebury was a co-ed institution. He almost turned the car around when he drove to drop her off and saw men walking around the campus. “I had a boyfriend — I was terrified that even petting and fooling around could impregnate me,” she wrote. “I recall my boyfriend drawing a diagram of my body and showing me how my reproductive organs worked.” To this day, most women from the Class of 1971 do not know who sent them “the letter.” *** When Sharon Smith ’68 mailed her early decision application from California to Middlebury, she had one goal: to get as far away from her dysfunctional family as possible. Smith lived in Battell her first year and took classes in anything and everything she could. With no idea what she wanted to study, Smith ultimately declared a French major after hearing a rumor that all female French majors got to live in “The Chat.” She later went on to switch her major to American Literature. The summer after her first year, Smith did not want to return home to the family she had finally escaped. Her deceased grandparents had left her money and she wanted to use it to take classes in New York City for the summer. First, she had to convince her father, who controlled her access to the money. “I told my father I wanted to go to Barnard and he said, ‘No, you can't go there. It's dangerous.’ And he wouldn't explain why, but I gradually figured out that he assumed that if I went to a girls’ college, I would automatically be recruited into lesbianism,” Smith said. She eventually convinced him to allow her to take courses at Columbia University instead. Smith entered into an affair with a man during her summer in New York. She visited him again for Thanksgiving break her sophomore fall. “I was very naive and I didn't want to do some of the things that I found myself having to do,” Smith said. At the time, Smith said, contraception was not something many women knew about — or knew how to get. She had tried to get a prescription for birth control pills from a doctor while at school, but when the Vermont doctor discovered she was unmarried, he kicked her out of his office. When Smith returned to campus after the break, she discovered she was pregnant and was forced to return home to California where she had no option but to live with her father. Smith spent her time at home writing to old classmates from her California boarding school and traveling to San Francisco to try and convince doctors to give her an abortion. Abortion would not be legal for another eight years until 1973, when the Supreme Court passed its landmark Roe v. Wade decision. One day, while Smith was visiting a doctor, her father went through her mail and opened a letter that revealed her pregnancy. Her father found a doctor who owed him a favor, and Smith received hormonal injections which induced a miscarriage. The process was incredibly painful and Smith bled heavily for several days. After finding out about her pregnancy — and thus her sexual activity — her father, who Smith described as a pedophile and “genuine psychopath,” acted out abusively and violently toward her. He beat her, punching her and leaving nasty bruises all over her face and body. Smith returned to Middlebury for her sophomore year. One of the doctors she visited in San Francisco had refused to give her an abortion, but agreed to give her a prescription for birth control. She had the pills shipped to Middlebury and continued to have the prescription sent from California for many years. “Between junior and senior year,” Smith said, “I decided I wanted to make sure that Middlebury girls had the knowledge that every female should have about how our bodies work, what conception is what contraception is, what sex actually can do besides being fun.” So, by doing as much research as she could and from her own experiences, Smith wrote what would go on to be known as “the letter” — the same letter that Olivier and her friends re-read with disbelief at their 45th reunion. Smith asked a couple of close male friends who were members of the Theta Chi fraternity—“a marijuana-smoking, acid-dropping, motorcycle-riding-up-and-down-the-stairs kinda place”— to purchase a large bin of condoms. She enclosed a condom in each envelope with a copy of the letter and sent them through the campus mail system, a couple at a time to avoid suspicion. “I was so afraid someone would find out because I might be expelled. You know, all this sex stuff is dangerous, at least for girls,” Smith said. “If the girls get the knowledge then the boys can't do whatever they want.” In the first edition of The Campus that fall, an article appeared on the front page entitled: “Frosh Women Get ‘Unofficial Guide.’” Dr. Parton commented on the letter and verified many of its facts. “Apparently someone did a great deal of research,” he is quoted saying. He described the letter as “on the whole, very, very correct.” Parton said that he was willing to speak with small groups of girls and women about contraceptives, but he would not prescribe the birth control pill. There were no legal or medical barriers to him doing so, but he believed “that [was] up to the individual and the individual’s family doctor.” When McCravey and her classmates matriculated in 1967, women still had to wear skirts to dinner and men wore jackets and ties. Women occupied the Battell side of College Street and dorm hours required them to check in to their dormitories before a set time each night. Things started to change during McCravey’s sophomore year. Dorm hours ended and “by the time junior year came, it was like all hell broke loose.” Casual sex became more common and drug use was rampant. But women still did not talk openly about sex or contraceptive use. McCravey recalls that one might have inquired to a close friend about access to contraception, but no one sat around in their dorm hallways chatting about it. That same year, there was a doctor in Middlebury affiliated with Planned Parenthood who was willing to prescribe birth control. “I just sort of took the bull by the horns,” she said. Rather than making up stories, she told the doctor: “I'm in this relationship and I don't want to get pregnant. I've got a life to live and I've got plans. Now's not a good time.” Today, McCravey is in awe of the risk taken by the letter’s author — to this day, she doesn't know who sent it — in delivering that information to first-year women. She sees it as an incredibly brave gift to all of the women who received it. “She was doing it as a warning and as a help to naive young girls that she thought we were — and that she knew we all probably were. I think it's astonishing and remarkable that she took the time and the effort and somehow managed to get it into our mailboxes and get it printed off,” McCravey said. Smith viewed her letter as a way to give back. Today she continues to do that as a neuropsychologist in Maine, where she works primarily with Medicaid clients. She found love in 1970. Smith and her husband celebrated the 50th anniversary of their friendship this past February, and the 47th year of their marriage in April. *** Over 50 years later, a lot has changed on Middlebury’s campus. Men live in Battell, women no longer have to wear skirts to dinner and no one has to find a fake wedding band to go to a doctor’s appointment. Izzy Lee ’20 is the leader of the student group Sex Positive Education College Style (SPECS), an organization whose creation was inspired by an idea from a class she took her freshman year. Lee’s first reaction to “the letter” was: “Thank God that birth control has come to where it is.” “I'm impressed that [the letter] cover[s] rhythm method, male contraceptive diaphragms, foams, jellies, creams and then the pill and stuff,” Lee said. “But the angle of how SPECS and other groups teach about birth control has shifted. “[The letter is about] how you can safely have sex so that a boy's happy, and you don't get pregnant. But if you do get pregnant, here's what you're supposed to do,” she said. SPECS education workshops focus primarily on consent and emphasize that “it's so normal and so fine to say, ‘we need to use a condom,’” Lee said. The club reviews how condom use can play into consent, pressure and abuse and the difference between pregnancy prevention and STI prevention. Their workshops cover different types of available contraception and how to access those methods, with an effort to be as inclusive as possible, according to Lee. Today, students can receive contraceptive counseling at Parton Health Center. They can schedule a visit to undergo a “risk assessment,” in which Parton staff help students determine the safest method of contraceptive for them and educate students on the method they select. Parton’s nurse practitioners can prescribe contraceptives including oral pills, injections, patches and the ring, according to Director of Health Services Dr. Mark Peluso. A local pharmacy processes prescriptions and delivers them directly to campus. Students who are seeking an implant or an IUD, two more permanent forms of contraception, are directed to local gynecologic practices. The Planned Parenthood of New England (PPNE) health center located in Middlebury offers birth control, pregnancy testing, emergency contraception and abortion referrals, among other health care services for men, women and LGBTQ services. The PPNE chapter was started in Middlebury in 1969 by David B. Van Vleck, a professor of biology at the college and science educator, according to a memoriam written after his death in 2019. The health center served almost 800 patients in 2019, according to PPNE Vermont Communications Director Eileen Sullivan. “We remain as committed as ever to delivering compassionate, non-judgmental care to patients of all backgrounds and regardless of their ability to pay,” Sullivan wrote in an email to The Campus. “We love the Middlebury community and are so proud to have a presence there.” Lee added that the Health Center can administer pregnancy tests, provide free testing for STIs and dispense Plan B (emergency contraceptive) — though only after the recipient answers a slew of questions regarding why they need it. Like Smith, SPECS recognizes the importance of providing information about contraception and sexual relationships to students early in their Middlebury careers. SPECS holds workshops in first-year residence halls with the hope of getting resources to students who might be feeling overwhelmed by the amount of responsibility that comes with having a safe sex life. Lee observed that students enter Middlebury with varying degrees of knowledge and comfort surrounding issues of sex and consent, depending on where they are from and what kind of sex education they received prior to Middlebury. For Lee, the letter serves as a reminder that a lot has changed, but much still remains the same. Alvarez agreed. “I’m so relieved things have changed and chagrined that things have not changed enough for young women worldwide,” she wrote.
Middlebury students have seen their summer plans upended in recent weeks, as Covid-19 restrictions and the economic downturn impact internships and jobs. The Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) is working with students to create alternative summer plans, even while staff members shift to working remotely. The center has continued regular advising appointments with staff through Zoom, and Peer Career Advisors host daily virtual “Quick Questions” to review resumes and provide internship search tips, as they typically do on campus. The CCI is also launching several new initiatives this spring to support students in career exploration and job searches. “We’ve done some things that I think are particularly creative that, if things were normal, might have taken six months to a year to get off the ground,” said Ursula Olender, the CCI director of career advising and employer relations. Seniors graduate into a difficult job market Many seniors have had their job searches derailed as they head into an uncertain job market. While Middlebury reported a record high post-graduation employment rate last year, the class of 2020 faces an economy crippled by Covid-19 closures and the highest rate of US unemployment since the Great Depression. Rachel Veneziano ’20 had planned to stay in Vermont after graduation to do environmental service work in the state. Now, she is looking at moving to Boston, where she hopes there will be more job opportunities. “Even in the past few weeks, I've become increasingly flexible with the types of jobs I'm applying for as well,” Veneziano said. “As an Environmental Policy major, I was originally hoping to dive into that and find environmental work after graduation.” She has since accepted the possibility of not finding work in her field right away. Veneziano said she has found the CCI’s online programming effective and helpful in recent weeks. She and 54 others have joined the center’s new Senior Career Action Groups, in which five to seven seniors on similar career paths meet virtually with an advisor to talk about their job searches, interview experiences and ideas. “We've been having robust discussions regarding our thoughts and concerns on the post-graduation job search,” said Jack Carew ’20, who joined an action group led by Associate Director of Career Advising Tim Mosehauer, who focuses on consulting, government, law and public policy. “I've appreciated the opportunity to hear from my peers about the strategies they use when job searching and hearing Tim’s feedback as well,” Carew said. Carew, along with another student, was planning a series of theater and dance workshops with high school students who are writing personal statements for college, sponsored by grants from the Kathryn W. Davis Foundation’s Projects for Peace program. He is waiting to hear if the grants have been postponed until next year or canceled. In the meantime, he has found an opportunity to intern remotely with the National Council for Science and the Environment this summer. The CCI also hosted a panel titled, “Dear Class of 2020, We've Been There! Advice from Alumni of ’07–’09,” during which Midd alumni who graduated during the Great Recession shared their stories and suggestions about entering a difficult job market. “One of the things that we’re really working to counteract too is all the doom and gloom, and while we are certainly aware of all of the challenges…there are many organizations that indeed are still hiring and are very interested in our talented Middlebury pool of applicants,” said Peggy Burns, executive director of the CCI. “I think it’s super important to understand that your first job doesn’t define you, it doesn’t define the rest of your life,” Olender added. “You’ve got to get your foot in the door — and it doesn’t even have to be the right door, it can be any door — but get yourself out there.” Summer internships change amid uncertainty Many summer internships, jobs, research positions and opportunities abroad have been canceled or postponed, leaving a gap in many students’ summer plans. The CCI’s webpage now lists “Ideas for an Impactful Summer,” which lists several recommendations for students: asking an organization to continue an internship remotely, completing a micro-internship, volunteering, studying for graduate school exams, working on senior independent research and using various online learning tools. The center also plans to launch a new micro-internship program called MIDDGigs in the near future, connecting students with alumni for one- or two-week internships. “This is a great way for a student whose internship may have fallen through to still be able to get some experience, do a concrete project, build some skills, network a bit and be able to get a recommendation down the road,” Burns said. “And, it’s a relatively low commitment on the part of an alum.” The CCI is also still funding internships this summer, but they have only been authorized at this time to fund remote positions, according to a page on the website. They are also funding internships that are currently remote but that have the expectation of transitioning to in-person later in the summer — after June 15, students who have been granted this status will be able to apply to make their internships in-person, though the ability to do this will be based on CDC guidelines and local restrictions. The CCI is not funding any international internships unless students are conducting remote internships from their hometowns abroad. Many students have been able to adapt and create new summer plans. Gwen Davis ’22 was applying to consulting firms near Philadelphia when she got the news that Middlebury was sending students home. The internships she had applied to were canceled or unresponsive. Davis had worked with Mosehauer during the semester to create her initial summer plan, and spoke with him on Zoom after those positions disappeared. “He sent me a whole list of resources, but reminded me that this will be a summer like no other for everyone, and that networking and our Middlebury community is one of our greatest resources,” Davis said. She eventually found an internship with her father’s friend at a moving services company. “It certainly is not the industry I saw myself working in, but I know I have to be flexible at a time like this,” Davis said. “I now have the chance to be exposed to something totally new.” Celeste Levy ’22 was planning to live on campus this summer as an intern with Oratory Now, working with language school programs and traveling to Burlington and Boston to coach clients. She is currently working to brainstorm how that experience will continue remotely. “Coaching is so personal and physical, and doesn’t have the same effect over a screen. I think it will be less useful for our clients and less beneficial for me improving as a teacher. But, it will make us be creative and possibly expand our range of offerings,” Levy said. The CCI is also partnering with Oratory Now to provide virtual interview workshops, where students record videos of themselves responding to interview prompts and send it to Oratory Now coaches for annotations. After receiving feedback, students reach out to a Midd2Midd alumni volunteer to ask for a practice interview. The center planned to partner with Oratory Now before the pandemic, but sped up the process as recruiting shifted online. The CCI anticipates that virtual recruiting will become the new norm for first-round interviews even after students return to campuses, because it is more cost-efficient for employers. Employment at the college may also change this year. According to Middlebury’s decision-making calendar, researchers and workers can expect a decision on their summer positions by Friday, May 15. Francis Shiner ’23 intended to work as Music Professor Jeff Buettner's summer choral assistant. In that capacity, Shiner would have worked to digitize Middlebury’s choral archive, plan for the choir’s 2021 Japan tour, organize volunteer opportunities for music students in town and learn about running a college choir. “In case Midd doesn't keep summer research positions, I've been figuring out other options, including a possible grant from the CCI,” Shiner said. “As of now, I don't know what my summer will be like, and that terrifies me.” Shiner applied for an art grant to fund a summer project preparing the choir for the impacts of Covid-19, including how to have rehearsals and concerts without large group meetings. Although the CCI will continue providing advice and resources through the summer, staff members are also trying to allay students’ anxieties. “We talk about how this will always be the summer that has an asterisk. If there’s a gap in your resume and it happens to be this summer, I’m sure that you will be forgiven. But employers will want to know, how did you use your time?” Oldender said. “And it doesn’t have to be an internship for it to be productive.” Correction May 14, 2020: An earlier version of this story used the incorrect pronoun for Francis Shiner '23.
For Edyth Moldow ’23, this is a hopeful moment. Back home in Denver, Colorado, she is staying involved with the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and Sunrise Middlebury, both close-knit environmental organizations with a large on-campus presence. “Despite all of the negative consequences [of Covid-19] and all of the bad things that are going on in the world right now, it's actually pushing people to take more action than we were before,” Moldow said. “So in a way, it's kind of amped up the climate activism to a really high degree.” SNEG and Sunrise have continued their work via Zoom, Instagram and other digital platforms, but it’s been hard to stay in close communications from a distance, Moldow said. While not everyone is able to devote the same energy to organizing that they could on campus, those who can still participate have become even more dedicated, with many members channeling feelings of helplessness and isolation into environmental action. “Right now, there is more of a need than there ever has been, to be taking action in whatever capacity we're able to,” Moldow said. Malia Armstrong ’22.5, also a member of SNEG and Sunrise, is using this time in Southern California to check in with herself and her community. The two organizations are prioritizing community-building, she said, by touching base at every meeting and figuring out new ways to support each other — an attitude she described as, ‘Don’t worry, we have your back.’ Even during a normal semester, activism can be draining, and going remote has posed additional challenges to Middlebury’s environmental leaders. “At school, we feel like we're getting so much accomplished,” Armstrong said. “It's easy to see what we're doing. Like, we'll have an event and we can see all the people who came, or, we plan an action and we get to see the action come to fruition. But here, like it's harder to visualize success. What we've been doing, it's not tangible anymore.” Armstrong helps new Sunrise members find their place in activism — something she also struggled with when she arrived at Middlebury. “As a person of color, I don’t have the luxury of being able to get arrested without fear of being targeted,” she said. She prefers working behind the scenes on community building and event and action planning, a side of activism that was new to her, but which she has come to embrace. “Being a part of such close communities with SNEG and Sunrise, and hearing other people’s stories and their journey through activism, has helped me figure out what I really enjoy and what I care about,” Armstrong said. Jacob Freedman ’21, a co-founder of place-based conservation effort The Wild Hometown Movement and Middlebury offshoot WildMidd, was supposed to spend the semester at the Middlebury School in Argentina. The program was canceled on March 13. “As I was flying home, I was super flip-flopping on my emotions,” Freedman said. “I was like, ‘No, this is horrible, this is the worst thing ever,’ and then 10 minutes later, I’d be like, ‘I need to do everything that I can to help my community find solace and security and safety in this time.’” Freedman has been working with his local land trust in Worcester, Massachusetts since high school, and he jumped back into land protection work as soon as he got home. He’s been making maps using GIS, finishing an urban trail network he has wanted to get up and running for years, and searching for rattlesnakes in a nearby forest. The rattlesnake hunt is a long-shot conservation effort: developers are interested in cutting down the forest, but if Freedman can find a rattlesnake, the land will be protected. He and a filmmaker friend are also putting together a series of videos about Worcester’s forests and nature areas. The project aims to help build community around nature. “I think with people looking for things to do right now, just sort of showing that the natural world is alive and nature is thriving around us, that’s a really hopeful message,” he said. Freedman and WildMidd co-founder Oscar Psychas ’21 passed the torch to new club leadership, and are focusing on expanding the organization to other New England colleges. “The whole goal of WildMidd is connecting with nature where we live, loving the communities that we live in and recognizing that the wild world exists all around us,” Freedman said. “I’m super excited for this to be a moment for folks who feel really comfortable on online platforms to take the lead,” said Hannah Laga Abram ’23, who does not consider herself a particularly internet-savvy activist. She thrives on in-person organizing and is using this time to center down, take long walks in rural New Mexico and refocus on the nature she is fighting to protect. “As much organizing as is being done online and virtually, it just isn't the same as being able to be in the same space with people and really talk to folks, and hear their stories, and really engage them,” she said. Laga Abram continues to attend SNEG meetings, and has been co-writing op-eds highlighting the need for socially transformative solutions to Covid-19. “I think that's a really important way to get our opinions out right now,” she said, “particularly regarding the way that COVID-19 is completely enmeshed in the climate crisis, and all of the ways that the broken systems that this is revealing are exactly, also, what have caused and continue to cause the climate crisis. And that our solutions to this used to be really focused on that.” Haley Goodman ’21 had to leave Middlebury’s program in Madrid in March. She returned home to New York and soon started volunteering remotely with the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACORN) in Middlebury, helping to start a virtual farmers’ market that opened on April 29. Customers at the market order directly from farmers and collect their orders at one of two pick-up locations, in Bristol on Wednesday afternoons and Middlebury on Thursday mornings. Goodman worked at ACORN in the summer and fall, and they reached out to her after she left Spain about assisting with the farmers’ market. Since then, she has helped out wherever is needed, including onboarding farmers, finding locations for dropoff sites, contacting volunteers, editing the website and building the app. “It's been so heartening, and made me just feel filled with joy and hope, trying to reach out to get volunteers, and see who's interested in helping us out in any way, because the response that I've gotten has just been people being overjoyed to share all the resources that they can,” Goodman said. An environmental geography major, Goodman is reformatting the market’s interactive map, which connects people in Addison County to more than 200 farmers and food producers, to be compatible with its forthcoming mobile app. Correction May 14, 2020: An earlier version of this story stated that Goodman created the interactive map. She did not make the map, but is adapting it to the mobile app.
Middlebury College will welcome a total of 750 new students as members of the classes of 2024 and 2024.5, an uptick from last year’s cohort of 703. The increase comes after the college’s acceptance rate jumped to 24% this year, an 8% rise from last year’s admission cycle. 640 new students currently plan to enroll in September and 110 will join the college in February. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Among those planning to matriculate, 30% are students of color and 15% will be first-generation students, increases of 3% and 4% respectively. International students will comprise 11% of the class, while 18.9% will be Pell Grant recipients. The students hail from 44 states and Washington, D.C. as well as 54 countries. The number of students receiving financial aid has also increased to 51%, up from 41% last year. Such fluctuation from year to year is common as Middlebury remains a need-blind institution. The college will award a total of approximately $16.6 million, with the average grant being $51,378. After the pandemic led to the cancellation of traditional admissions events such as Preview Days and on-campus tours, the college has been forced to improvise. Admitted prospective students were offered a medley of remote programs and events including three Experiential Learning Centers that offer virtual connection to staff and faculty, as well as the option to be matched with a current Middlebury student with whom to text in lieu of Preview Days. Although these students have all accepted Middlebury’s offer of admission, these statistics are tentative. The status of the upcoming academic year is still in question, with the administration set to communicate a contingency plan for the fall semester by June 22. The admissions staff is continually monitoring deferral requests and availability of student visas for incoming first-years and other students alike, leaving concrete enrollment numbers uncertain. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}();
In the wake of financial disruption and rising projected deficits, Middlebury has instituted a temporary hiring freeze for all employees. The policy is set to continue into the 2021 fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2020 and extends to July 1, 2021, and will remain until the college has “more clarity on the budget,” according to an April 23 memo to faculty and staff. Under the freeze, the college has ceased all faculty and staff hiring processes that had not been completed before the transition to remote learning, including searches that were in the background check or verbal offer stages. In addition, the college is no longer supporting any new searches. The Campus reported significant facilities staff shortages this fall, including a block of 16 vacancies in Custodial Services that necessitated the hiring of an externally contracted cleaning service to clean student spaces. But applications for those positions and others surged after the college’s increased entry-level wages for its lowest-paid employees in late December. At the time the hiring freeze was instituted, all but three positions in facilities — which includes custodial and maintenance workers — were filled, according to Missy Beckwith, associate director for the Office of Facilities Services. Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti emphasized that faculty hiring processes were largely unaffected by the freeze given that almost all faculty hires for the 2021 fiscal year had already been completed prior to the transition to remote learning. Only one faculty search had not concluded by late March, according to Moorti; this search was frozen. “In making this decision, we have sought to balance our commitment to academic continuity with the financial shocks the College is experiencing as a result of the knock-on effects of the pandemic,” Moorti said. Elaborating on the college’s decision to suspend hiring processes, VP for Human Resources Karen Miller cited the college’s commitment to continue paying benefits-eligible employees. “In light of these changes and given our intent to ensure pay continuity for our existing staff for as long as possible, we do not believe this is the time to add new employees to our workforce,” Miller wrote in her announcement to the community. The college has implemented a number of changes to support this commitment, including instituting a “Covid-19 Pay Bank.” The Pay Bank provides up to 21 days off of work that can be used for circumstances related to the current crisis, in addition to the college’s ordinary vacation time and sick leave provisions. The college has also attempted to support teleworking arrangements from some employees, as well as find temporary reassignment for staff after the cancelation of in-person classes and the subsequent evacuation left the campus with fewer than 140 students. These staff — who are typically considered essential workers — include dining, facilities, health and safety employees. Miller acknowledged that this hiring freeze may burden some departments, but ultimately stressed that the change is both a necessary and a temporary mechanism to help the college adjust to financial blows related to the Covid-19 outbreak. “We are sorry for any difficulty this may cause, but the uncertainty of this time forces us into this (temporary) position,” Miller wrote in her announcement. “Cooperation and teamwork between departments is especially important during this period. We appreciate your understanding and support.”
Like the class of 2019.75, the class of 1918 was forced to leave Middlebury early. Just before the end of the fall 1917 term, The Campus reported emergency schedule changes that would reduce Christmas vacation by a week and move the class of 1918’s Commencement from June to early May of the following spring. This was to allow students to return home to their farms in time for the spring planting season. Farm workers, as with all types of workers, had been in short supply since the U.S. joined the war in Europe in 1917. This was just one of many changes that the war would require. The college was raising $400,000 to secure it against wartime changes just as the men’s college senior class was “suffering depletion continually” as “one by one they drop out” to enter military service, according to a December 1917 Campus report. Nonetheless, campus life carried on. KDR continued to hold notable parties. The Campus exchanged heated op-eds about current events. Little did they realize what was waiting for them when they returned. The so-called Spanish Flu had been spreading across Europe since the spring. Vermont Secretary of Health Charles Dalton, like many of his counterparts across the U.S., knew it was only a matter of time before the deadly influenza pandemic would reach his state. Finally, it hit Vermont in September 1918, just as students were returning from their homes across the country. By Sept. 21, 40 “Middites” were sick. Five days later, student Charles Thompson had died. His death was followed a week later by that of another student, Charles Dana Carlson. The College implemented a quarantine and, a few days later, the state banned all public gatherings. Initially, college officials were not overly concerned with the cold-like symptoms displayed by students. Yet, they quickly reversed course as Thompson’s health rapidly declined. The college converted Hepburn Hall, already commandeered for the new Student Army Training Corps (SATC), into an infirmary. Townspeople had set up an armed guard to ensure that students stayed on campus. The town itself was struggling to meet the medical needs of its residents, ultimately leading to a high death rate. “[W]ires to Middlebury from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and other states nearby were kept hot with anxious messages,” reported The Campus. “[F]athers and mothers came to town, and all was alarm.” Middlebury’s quick and thorough response proved crucial; one student complained that six doctors visited her in a single morning. The (delayed) first issue of The Campus on Oct. 16, 1918 reported that the quarantine might soon be lifted. In the meantime, quarantined students were entertaining themselves: Marion Young, the physical director of the women’s college, organized daily hikes, exercises and soccer games for the residents of “Pearsons and Battell Cottage.” The men’s college organized an intramural football game to replace the canceled game against Williams. Classes resumed on Oct. 25. Despite two deaths and the “military quarantine,” the flu wasn’t the only news story of the day. The SATC had taken over Starr and Hepburn halls. Their Oct. 1 induction exercises took place in a modified, pandemic-response form from the steps of a one-year-old Mead Chapel. Armed, uniformed students could be found patrolling campus day and night for the rest of the semester. Effects of the war were felt in more subtle ways as well. A myriad of fundraisers, including the continuing endowment fundraiser, the United War Work Campaign, and a collection to eliminate The Campus’s debt, were continuously promoted — all had a connection to war disruptions. Those who remained on campus wished they could “get into the game” in Europe, as a Nov. 1918 Campus editorial read (FOMO, apparently, was as strong then as it is now). Nonetheless, the college was slowly regaining a sense of normalcy. Although November’s Charter Day festivities had to be reduced, quarantine was lifted only two days later. This prompted an impromptu “visitors’ day on the Hill,” full of friends and family who were finally allowed to visit students. By the next week, rumors began to spread of peace in Europe. Lieutenant Miles Jones, commandant of the Middlebury SATC, banned the SATC from celebrating until the official declaration of peace the following Monday, Nov. 11. Former college president Ezra Brainerd gave the benediction at chapel services that day. Classes were canceled and the study body flooded into town to celebrate. The troubles of this unusual semester seemed to be firmly in the past. Now in 2020, as we wait for stay at home orders to end, for vaccines to be developed, for good news regarding our summer and fall plans, we can find comforting words in a December 1918 Campus editorial. “Middlebury faces almost daily changes. It is with a feeling of wonder as to what will come next that we greet each day and it is not strange that under such conditions the student body should be unusually restless and undecided.” Even after the war ended and the campus recovered from the pandemic, change was the rule of the day.
William Garrett Nash lived without fear. His family and friends will remember him for his ability to live with joy in the present, his passion for innovating and the boundless love he held for those around him. Will died on March 7 at Middlebury. He was 21 years old. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The world needs fearless people like Will Nash. They are our risk takers, our astronauts, our explorers, our entrepreneurs and our front-of-the-line first responders.[/pullquote] Will grew up in San Anselmo, California with his twin brother, Drew, and younger sister, Cate. At Middlebury, he studied economics and Spanish, competed on the track and field team in pole vaulting through his sophomore year, and spent summers and much of his free time pursuing entrepreneurship. “The world needs fearless people like Will Nash. They are our risk takers, our astronauts, our explorers, our entrepreneurs and our front-of-the-line first responders,” said Ross Sullivan, his pole-vaulting coach at Sir Francis Drake High School. On the track, Will was intrepid. His mother, Kristen Nash, recalled that after watching the 2012 Olympics, Will decided he wanted to become a pole vaulter. And so, he did. “By the start of his senior year in high school he was the leading vaulter in our county and third on our school’s all-time list,” Sullivan said. That same year, a basketball-stunt-induced accident left casts on both of Will’s arms, putting an almost certain end to his high school vaulting career. But rather than accept defeat, Will spent the next several months training for speed and strength — broken arms and all. His casts were taken off right before the county meet and he still managed to qualify for California’s NCS Redwood Empire Championship Track Meet, where he finished runner-up. “I have seen a lot of gutsy things in the 10 years I’ve coached pole vault, but without a doubt, watching Will on that day stands out from all others,” Sullivan said. At Middlebury, he would achieve his personal record in pole vault, qualifying for the NESCAC Championship his sophomore year. In the classroom, Will could be a quiet student, but you would be mistaken to assume that he wasn’t engaged, said Middlebury Economics Professor David Munro. “When he shared, it was often some of the most insightful thoughts and questions which enriched our discussions,” Munro said. “He was a searcher, reflecting with care on the meaning of our reading and our collective work,” said Jonathan Isham, an economics and environmental science professor. Outside of his studies and athletic pursuits, Will was constantly innovating. Known as the “idea man” among his group of lifelong friends from elementary school, Will was always coming up with shenanigans or new business ideas. He could be found designing desks with built-in toasters or discussing ideas for a craft brew label with his father, Lenny Nash. This entrepreneurial spirit continued to flourish at Middlebury. Will was selected for MiddCORE, an intensive experiential-learning program for leaders and innovators. Along with close friend and roommate Ayman Quadir ’20, he founded Semi Aquatics, a luxury streetwear brand focused on sustainable sourcing, in November of 2019. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Will embraced the possibility of failure better than anyone I know. He welcomed risk and adventured into the unknown with the wisdom of someone far beyond his years.[/pullquote] It was Will’s fearlessness and creativity that made him so well-suited to the temperament of a true entrepreneur. “Will embraced the possibility of failure better than anyone I know. He welcomed risk and adventured into the unknown with the wisdom of someone far beyond his years,” said Blaine Shira, Will’s older cousin. “I can only hope that at the end of my life, I have lived as much as Will did in his far too short, but full life.” Whether it was skiing on the Alpine Meadows Big Mountain team in high school, rallying his friends for endless games of pick-up basketball or chasing wild boars in Spain, Will packed his days with action and adventure. Venturing far from his childhood home, Will lived in Barcelona with his family during his eighth-grade year, and studied abroad in Madrid during his junior year at Middlebury. “His spirit of adventure was awesome. His humor was the best kind: quick and dry,” said his mother Kristin Nash. “But mostly, his capacity to love his family and his friends was beautiful and big.” Above all, Will’s friends and family remember him as a true companion. He cultivated friendships with the same devotion and passion with which he approached entrepreneurial endeavors and athletic feats. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]His innate freedom to explore and appreciate each moment, and to love so easily and completely, is the stuff that people might meditate for years to experience, but to Will it came naturally.[/pullquote] Will remained close with a group of friends from his hometown – the self-proclaimed “Selmo Crew” — but made new friends easily wherever he went, whether at Middlebury or in Barcelona. Even as a kid, he never wanted to leave anyone out, Kristin Nash said. Childhood sleepovers would often entail pitching a tent and unrolling tons of sleeping bags to make enough room for everyone. “His innate freedom to explore and appreciate each moment, and to love so easily and completely, is the stuff that people might meditate for years to experience, but to Will it came naturally,” Stephanie Nash, his aunt, said. Friends at Middlebury attest to Will’s huge capacity to love. “He’d always be down to play one more round of NBA 2K, to stay up one more hour on a Saturday night, to cook one more meal in our suite even if GrilleMe was on the way,” Christian Chiang ’20 said. His circle of friends was deep and close, Chiang said, and to those who loved him, Will reciprocated a generous and true friendship. “Will was the life of the party,” said his friend Christopher Woodburn ’20. “I don’t know a better way to describe him than that.” “Above all else, he had a big heart,” added Chiang. “I don’t think there was any room for negativity in his life; he was always occupied with living his life to the fullest.” The Nash family hosted a virtual candle-lighting ceremony on Wednesday, April 29 – Will’s birthday — to celebrate his life. He would have been 22. They remembered him on this day by taking in one of his favorite sights — the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean — and making lamb and beef Bolognese, one of his favorite recipes that he learned from his friend Ayman. “Will was a friend to everyone. He lived fearlessly and on his own terms,” Kristin Nash said. “Although I was his mother, Will was one of my greatest teachers; he embodied everything I wish I could be. Now I will live everyday trying to live that way for him.” Nash is survived by his parents Kristin and Lenny Nash; his twin brother Drew Nash, also 21, a senior at Wake Forest University; and his younger sister Cate, 19, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley. A video recording of the memorial service held in Will’s honor at Middlebury this March can be found here. The college will award him a posthumous bachelor's degree in economics. Will’s family has set up a William G. Nash Memorial Fund in Will’s honor, dedicated to promoting wellbeing among Marin County youth. To learn more about donating to that fund, please click here.
The state’s already struggling dairy industry has been destroying its sitting supply of milk in a reluctant response to Covid-19 economic realities. Due to the indefinite shut down of restaurants, schools and businesses, Vermont’s dairy farms have been faced with a steep drop in demand and nowhere to store excess product. A high demand in food retail does not nearly make up for the lack of food service. And across the nation, farmers are destroying the fresh food that they can no longer sell. “We are deeply concerned about all dairy farms at this moment in time,” said Laura Ginsberg, agricultural development section chief of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets. “After 4 years of really poor milk prices coming into this, it's not like farmers were set up in a strong financial position, because milk prices have been low for so long now.” Ginsberg anticipates that it will take a toll, but is uncertain how drastic the magnitude of the shock will be in the industry across Vermont and New England. Prior to the virus outbreak, U.S. dairy farmers overproduced and oversupplied their milk to salvage a shrinking profit. Because agricultural goods are not adjusted to inflation, the surplus lowers milk prices. This forces dairy farmers into a cycle of production expansion in response to price reductions. New England’s small-scale farmers are left especially vulnerable, since the USDA sets milk retail prices at the highly industrialized national standard. “It’s cheaper to produce milk out west, so their cost of production is lower than ours. And you can't have a large farm in Vermont because of topography and weather, so there's no way we can compete on cost of production. This is a really troublesome spot for our producers,” Ginsberg said. Doug Dimento, director of corporate communications at Agri-Mark and Cabot, speculates that there may be a fundamental shift in dairying in the Northeast. “Small farmers have been financially fragile,” he said. “We were expected to see rebounds in farm prices this year, but now we expect them to go down over the next few months because of oversupply of milk forcing prices downward.” Jon Rooney, owner of Monument Farms in Weybridge, where the college sources its milk, has seen significantly reduced demand from restaurant closures. “Due to the fact that Middlebury College students are consuming less and less milk, the lack of [Middlebury College] Food Service has not had a big impact on our fluid milk usage,” Rooney wrote in an email to The Campus. “Restaurant sales represent a substantial portion of our overall business, but it’s the extras, primarily cream, the most valuable portion of the milk, that are piling up.” Ancillary products, such as cheese, sour cream, heavy cream and half & half play a big role in the farm’s overall revenues, but the milk is being dumped rather than processed. For example, Cabot, a dairy processing company that sources from 160 Vermont dairy farms, is working overtime to alleviate the effects of oversupply. Cabot has four plants that run for 20 hours each day, leaving four hours to sanitize the facility. “We are running full speed, as hard as we can,” Dimento said. “In Springfield, Mass., we’re making butter and milk powder as quickly as we can, but it's not fast enough to absorb all this extra milk.” The Middlebury plant, located on Exchange Street, continues to employ a full staff. Monument Farms has already been dumping its skim milk for three years. “We had a great need for the cream, but not the skim milk,” Rooney said. Previously, the farm dumped its skim milk into a digester to generate electricity. Monument Farms would truck its milk to a plant, where workers skim off the cream and return the fat-free milk to the farm. Now, the farm dumps full fat milk without selling the cream. Other co-ops and processing companies claim milk from farmers, only to dump it in mature pits or co-op facilities, according to Ginsberg. “A farmer may not know their milk is getting dumped out, or a farm might have a milk truck come, pump the milk out of the tank, then back up to the manure pit and dump it there,” she said. Ginsberg said that although there is a misperception that individual farmers are making the decision to dump milk, this is never the case — it is ultimately the decision of the cooperative or company with which the farmer is affiliated. Molly Anderson, professor and director of Food Studies at the college, believes the best solution is for the government to purchase the excess milk from dairy processors and distribute it to food-insecure households. The USDA has allocated $19 billion in Covid-19 relief to the agricultural sector; $3 billion will purchase commodities for food insecure households. “If the processors are selling yogurt, cheese and butter to the government, it means they can take more from the farmers,” Anderson said. While donating the milk is a potential remedy, it brings new challenges. “We are working on getting that excess fluid milk into the charitable food system,” Ginsberg said. “That is not as easy as it sounds. There are very strict federal regulations on how milk moves through the marketplace.” The Vermont Agency of Agriculture is working with a number of charitable organizations to bypass these barriers. “I had a conference call involving Cabot and several other groups to get as much food as we can to the food banks, but we don’t borrow any fluid milk; we have no way to get it: no trucks,” Dimento said. If milk dumping becomes a long term practice, farmers will eventually reduce their herd numbers to decrease the amount of food, water and other inputs. “There is going to be some killing of cows that wouldn’t otherwise have happened in such a quick manner,” Ginsberg said. Despite recent supply management efforts, this poses a serious threat to farmer income. "There are going to be lots of tough decisions made on farms,” Dimento said. “We are very scared for what may take place on farms in months ahead.” As for Monument Farms, Rooney said that he does not plan on reducing his herd size. “Due to the fact that we need to be ready once restaurants open back up,” he said,” it would not be a good idea for us to reduce cow numbers.”
Aaron Petty ’02 missed his own graduation. A few weeks before the ceremony, he contracted tuberculosis; by the day of graduation, he was bedridden. As the valedictorian of his class, he was scheduled to give a speech entitled “On the Existence of God” to close out the ceremony. That speech, sadly, was never delivered, leaving a significant gap in the program. His absence was especially awkward, though, because Petty was the only person set to graduate that day. Middlebury’s first graduating class, the class of 1802, consisted of one person. That person was Aaron Petty. A shoemaker by trade, Petty wanted an education so that he could become a minister. He entered the college as a junior in 1800, the year Middlebury was founded, and split his time between shoemaking and school to pay for his classes. Graduation in Petty’s time was a rather solemn affair. Considering the ceremony included 24 speeches over the course of 24 hours (two orations in Latin, two orations in Greek, three declamations, two colloquies, three dialogues, three disputes and nine orations in English, plus four sets of sacred music and two sets of instrumental music), you could argue that Petty was lucky to have fallen ill when he did. If modern graduation ceremonies are a bit of a snooze, this must have been an excruciating puritanical night terror. Despite the ceremony’s inexcusable dreariness, though, Petty must have been pretty disappointed to miss it. He was known “for his ambition to advance himself in life,” according to historian David Stameshkin, and he hoped that an education would provide the bootstraps with which to pull himself out of … well, boot-making. After two years of hard work and many pairs of shoes, Petty was expecting to have a ceremony to honor all that hard work — graduation was, quite literally, his day. But, for reasons out of his control, he had to celebrate commencement from his bedroom. Petty’s story seems especially relevant this year, when, once again, the entire senior class will miss graduation due to illness. We will observe commencement, at least for now, from our respective bedrooms. Two hundred and twenty years later, an old Middlebury tradition has found new life. Like the Panther Parade, this is not a tradition anyone had really hoped would continue. Nobody wants to fear for their health. And nobody wants to miss graduation, except maybe for younger siblings. Just as Petty did in 1802, we want recognition of our efforts. And rightfully so! The multiplicity of experiences and challenges that the members of our class have lived through over the last four years (and the last four weeks) should be honored, publicly. Every person has their own reasons for feeling a sense of accomplishment this May, and to suddenly lose the recognition of that accomplishment is like finishing a marathon only to find there was no one watching the race. There’s no sugar-coating it: losing graduation sucks. (Losing Senior Week sucks, too, but for slightly more Dionysian reasons.) It sucks for us, it sucks for our families, it sucks for local businesses, and it sucks especially for the hungry campus squirrels. Yet amid all that suckiness, there are also reasons to rejoice. Recently, I’ve found myself turning to a favorite poet of our generation, who says, “Ain't about how fast I get there, ain't about what's waitin’ on the other side … it's the climb.” Miley Cyrus’s corporate-spawned clichés hit home for a reason: it is about the climb, and that’s especially true for college. Whether there is a ceremony or not, nothing about the four (well, three and three-quarters) years we spent at Middlebury will change. We still filled our brains with useful information and economics; we still formed beautiful, lasting friendships; we still figured out that Atwater is not the place to find love; and we still leave Middlebury with memories of immense happiness, with the scars of immense stress, and, most importantly, with a whole lot of love. We will also hopefully still leave with one of those weird old-timey canes. In loss, we have been granted clearer vision of what we have been given. And we’ve been given so much. Six months after graduating from his bed, Aaron Petty died. He had never recovered from the tuberculosis that had forced him to miss commencement. Thus the class of 1802, half a year after leaving Middlebury, ceased to exist. Unless I’m horribly mistaken, the class of 2020 has a much brighter future ahead of it. Whatever may happen in the coming months, and whenever we hold our eventual physical graduation, that future — our future — is something to have faith in. Will O’Neal is a member of the class of 2020.
Early this fall, on a quiet evening, Community Council Co-Chair Roni Lezama ’22 was in his dorm room doing homework when he received a call from Baishakhi Taylor, the dean of students and Lezama’s fellow Co-Chair of Community Council. “Where are you?” he recalled her saying. “Come to Old Chapel.” Lezama, fearing the worst, hopped on his bike and zipped across campus as fast as he could, just as the sun was beginning to set. But when he arrived at Taylor’s office, it was clear that no school-wide, calamitous emergency had taken place. Instead, Taylor just wanted Lezama’s advice to ensure student voices were represented in the midst of confusion and pushback in response to the announcement regarding the installation of new security cameras. To Lezama, this immediate inclination has characterized Taylor’s overarching mission as Middlebury’s Dean of Students — to have each and every voice within the student body inform her decisions. Known for responding to emails in mere minutes, she has been described by those who worked closely with her as exceptionally communicative and uniquely receptive. “I can’t even put into words how accessible she was to students,” Lezama said. “There was a sense of urgency, but not from an optics perspective. She actually cared about what students were thinking about.” Such instincts, in essence, make clear the sorrow that many are feeling in response to the news of Taylor’s departure. President Laurie Patton, in a school-wide email earlier this month, announced that Taylor would be leaving Middlebury to assume the position of Dean of the College and Vice President of Student Life at Smith College, a private women’s college in Northampton, Mass. and member of the Seven Sisters, effective July 1. As an assistant professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and the faculty mentor for the BOLD Women’s Leadership Initiative, women’s education has been paramount within Taylor’s own life. “I came to the U.S. to study women’s studies,” Taylor, who grew up and completed her undergraduate education in India, said. “More than ever, I would like to focus on women leadership at an institutional level, and I’m grateful that Middlebury prepared me for that.” She also cited accessibility to her family as another motivation for the transition. The majority of her family lives in India, and proximity to a major airport — Boston Logan in this case— has proven to be even more critical in the context of her father’s passing last year. Her husband works in Washington, D.C. Before coming to Middlebury, Taylor served as the Associate Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University, where Patton was her mentor and supervisor. Taylor was also a faculty member at the Duke Center for South Asian Studies and the program in Education. A focal point of Taylor’s tenure at Middlebury has been fostering a productive, harmonious relationship between academic and student life. Once a week, she fielded advice and facilitated conversation with her student advisory group, which is composed of students representing different grades, interests and backgrounds. “No process is perfect, but I’ve tried to get us to a more student-centric approach,” she said. “It’s about how we continue to meet student needs in a holistic and integrated way.” Student Government Association President Varsha Vijayakumar ’20, who worked closely with Taylor, expressed gratitude for her insight and support during her presidential term, specifically citing her balanced feedback, institutional knowledge and general openness. “She’s really good at tapping into our thoughts and is really keen on listening to our fears and what excites us,” Vijayakumar said. “She harnesses that and truly takes it into account.” For Vijayakumar and Lezama, Taylor has stood out as a member of administration who has routinely kept them and other students in the loop regarding the goings-on in Old Chapel. While Taylor may have paved the way, they hope this precedent will continue. “She was not afraid to separate her role as an administrator and [her role], dare I say, as a friend,” Lezama said, also noting her consistent support for first-generation and low-income students. “She just wanted to care for and support you, and if she couldn’t do it through her powers as an administrator, she would use whatever devices she had.” Vijayakumar also believes that having closer, more personal relationships with administrators will only serve to help promote more productive and empathetic conversation. “[Baishakhi] should be the rule, not the exception,” Vijayakumar said. Lezama believes that the next dean of students will have big shoes to fill when it comes to student advocacy and administrative clarity. “I’m really going to miss her,” he said. Meanwhile, Taylor’s advice for her successor is simple: “Listen closely to the students.”
During Preview Days every year, The Campus invites prospective students in to chat about what it is we do in our subterranean Hepburn Hall office. We like to tell prospective students at that event what we worked on that year to give them a sense of how we cover our college community. We’ve tried to replicate that conversation, electronically, below. We always joke at The Campus that each year brings with it its own spring scandal. For seniors graduating in May, their first spring scandal was also perhaps the most significant in the college’s recent history: Charles Murray’s infamous 2017 visit to Middlebury sparked acrimonious debate about free speech and inclusion, leaving behind deep scars that the community continues to grapple with today. This spring, which marks the final semester for the same seniors who witnessed the events of Murray’s first visit unfold, The Campus braced for his return. After breaking his invitation to campus by the Young Republicans, our editorial board expected Murray’s third visit to be the defining moment of this academic year. And boy, were we wrong. On March 10, the college announced the cancellation of in-person classes in response to a rapidly unfolding Covid-19 crisis. As we traversed across the country and around the globe, we wondered how The Campus — along with everything else — would change. As we wrote in our notes from the desk, we found it critically important to continue our coverage from home. That decision has been a defining moment in our year as student journalists. The Campus continued our coverage from afar, reporting on changes to the grading policy, the struggles of local businesses and the lives of students who remain on campus. We launched The Middlebury Off-Campus project, a collection of stories from the wider Middlebury community, hoping to connect us when we are the furthest apart physically. The recent Love Issue put all the breaking news and the end of the world on a brief hiatus, bringing levity in a time when we all need a little bit of love. While on campus, our stories have also shaped the conversations we’ve had as a community and, in many cases, pushed for and inspired change. Diligent reporting of unionization efforts and custodial shortages turned the spotlight on staff wages, culminating in the college’s promise to increase compensation for certain staff. Poignant opinion pieces, such as one student’s essay on her struggle with eating disorders, encouraged us to talk about topics that are oftentimes considered taboo. An editor’s repeated reporting on on-campus vandalism provoked year-long conversations about the treatment of our campus. This year, we editorialized on cancel culture and the role of this paper amid tightening constraints on college journalists. We interviewed a Middlebury alumna who found herself at the center of the #MeToo movement and covered protests of New England’s biggest coal power plant. We also published a litany of sports features about Middlebury’s athletic community. We tried to push the creative boundaries of our paper, from the annotated map of campus from our first issue of the year to the inclusion of more artwork to accompany our opinion pieces. On campus, our arts reporters covered student productions and exhibits; now, they are keeping us sane in quarantine with book and movie recommendations. We have also striven to cover the diverse interests that make our community so vibrant — from the Ultimate Frisbee club’s bizarre traditions to the Museum of Art’s recent acquisition of ancient Chinese gold. And we expanded our scope to explore unique narratives that were oftentimes neglected, such as stories of queer love set against the backdrop of rural Vermont. Even this spring, as coronavirus news has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds, we sought to explore the stories beneath the surface, from an article about professors’ children intruding on Zoom sessions to a commentary on a world without sports. When we reconvene on campus and meet many of you for the first time, we hope you will join us in telling the stories that you care about. Bochu Ding ’21 is one of The Campus’ managing editors and next year’s editor in chief elect.
Middlebury featured a photo of a student protesting Charles Murray’s 2017 campus visit in a promotional Instagram story last week, sparking anger among current and former students who accused the college of attempting to rewrite a painful chapter of its history for marketing purposes. The Instagram story was posted Wednesday as part of the college’s “Midd Daily” campaign, which aims to give prospective students a taste of campus life. It featured a photo of Austin Kahn ’17.5, originally taken by Michael O’Hara ’17 on assignment for The Campus, protesting Murray’s visit in Wilson Hall. In the photo, Kahn holds a sign reading “this is an appropriate response” in front of the livestream of Murray’s conversation with Political Science Professor Allison Stanger. The Instagram story bore a caption that read, in part, “Social Justice and Activism: At Middlebury, we don’t just talk about social justice; we also act on it.” It was deleted later that afternoon. In the hour before O’Hara took the photo on March 2, 2017, protesters shouted down Murray as he attempted to deliver his talk in Wilson Hall, forcing him and Stanger to livestream their conversation from a different room. Stanger was later severely injured by protesters while leaving the building. Kahn was one of 74 students sanctioned by the college that spring for his role in the Murray protests (he did not reply to requests to describe the extent of sanctions he received as of press time, but has written publicly about being sanctioned on social media in the past). Severity of sanctions ranged from probation, which stayed on students’ records until the end of the semester, to official college discipline, which would remain on students’ permanent records. If it intended to embrace a longstanding part of campus culture, the Instagram story of Kahn also prompted anger that Middlebury was using an event for which students were disciplined as part of an advertising campaign. “Funny that you would punish students for protesting and then use their protest as part of an [sic] big advertising ploy,” wrote Cora Kircher ’20, a member of the environmental activism group Divest Middlebury, in an Instagram story of her own on Wednesday. Divest Middlebury later shared a screenshot of Kircher’s story to its Facebook page. The Campus previously reported on the lengthy disciplinary process Murray protesters faced, which in part used photo and video evidence of the protests to pinpoint who was involved. That process garnered criticism from people on many sides of the free speech debate, with Murray lambasting the punishments meted out as "pathetically” insufficient while others decried the “terroristic” effects of a disciplinary process meant to “satisfy national audiences,” in the words of a professor. “The funny thing is that after these protests, Middlebury launched an investigation where they used images like the one neatly featured on their account to discipline dissidents among the student body and intimidate sympathetic faculty,” Kahn wrote on his own Facebook page Thursday in a post that has since been shared 26 times. In an email to The Campus, Social Media Director Andrew Cassel acknowledged criticisms of the Instagram story as “fully justified.” “When we realized our mistake, of course we were concerned about any hurt it would bring to our community,” Cassel wrote. “In this case, both the admissions and communications teams recognized that we had made this oversight, and deleted the post.” Kahn said he saw the promotional intent behind the posting of the photo as stripping away the “socio-political context” of the protest it captured. “The phenomenon of removing that meaningful act from its context totally perverted it and makes it meaningless,” he said. “It’s absurd.” In what he saw as a silver lining, Kahn received a “wave” of messages from friends, many of whom had gone through the disciplinary process with him, notifying him that the image had been used in the college’s story on Wednesday. O’Hara, the photographer, said that the Office of Admissions previously asked him permission to use the image, which he granted, but that he “was not provided context for how the photo might be used.” He granted permission under the assumption that the image would be included in #SixtyScenes, a collection of photos documenting campus life separate from the “Daily Midd” series that are shared as Instagram posts, not stories. Cassel, who began as the college’s social media director last December, previously told The Campus that photos featured in the “Midd Daily” series are chosen collectively by multiple members of the admissions and communications offices. Midd Daily and #SixtyScenes fit Cassel’s vision of giving the college a more personal social media presence that better captures day-to-day realities of campus life, goals he described in a recent Campus profile. Debate over Charles Murray’s work and his right to a platform at Middlebury had revived at the college in the months prior to Kahn’s surprise shoutout: Murray was scheduled to speak in Wilson Hall on March 31 on a new invitation from the College Republicans. But Covid-19 led to the cancellation of his visit, which would have been his third to Middlebury since 2007, along with the rest of in-person spring programming.
Boy, what a ride it’s been. When we first got to campus as doe-eyed teens, I don’t think any of us knew we’d be signing up for a rollercoaster ride. Within our first three months, Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States. Shortly thereafter, anti-Muslim hate speech was found on a classmate’s whiteboard and a swastika on the door of a Jewish congregation in town. Our second semester was marked by Charles Murray’s infamous visit and all the protests, multiple racial profiling cases and ensuing sanctions. It was a jarring start to our college careers, to say the least. Sometimes I think back to when the letters of the word “RACIST” were spray painted across the pillars of Mead Chapel back in late 2017. Honestly, I think that image perfectly encapsulates Middlebury. That graffiti was a stark reminder of the not-so-pretty side of our school, that we have a long way to go; at the same time, Mead Chapel is also an edifice of hope and opportunity and celebration. Late one night after I learned that the college would close early because of the pandemic, I found myself sitting at the steps of that very building. I stared out at our dimly lit campus and suddenly began crying uncontrollably — not because of all the sh*t we’ve gone through, but because of how we’ve persevered and even found some beauty along the way. I’m thinking about the excitement of Preview Days, or the first time we experienced the Winter Carnival bonfire and fireworks in all their glory. I’m thinking about how we didn’t always have to swipe in to get into the dining halls, and how the lines would be out the door just for black pepper tofu or Midnight Breakfast. How every weekend the Grille would be packed after Cafe con Leche, and how at least one person most definitely lost their jacket or student ID along the way. Free & For Sale, anyone? And then there was the snow. Do you remember that one tree on Mead Chapel hill that was always decorated like a Christmas tree around the holidays? Random snowmen and the occasional igloo would pop up all around, new playthings for our feisty campus squirrels. MiddKids are generally really smart, but for some reason we would always try to cut across Battell beach even though walking around would probably be much faster. With the chilly winter of our third semester, though, came The List. Our campus plunged into conversations about just how widespread sexual violence is at Middlebury. But it also inspired our community to gather more intentionally around It Happens Here, a storytelling event that centers on the voices of survivors of sexual violence. There were only about 20 of us in Wilson Hall the year before. After The List, I couldn’t even get in. We protested the Muslim ban and spearheaded divestment. We cheered on our peers at dance and cultural performances, a cappella concerts and comedy shows. We learned to tell when it’s spring because everyone would start walking around in shorts, even though it was still 50 degrees outside. And soon enough, students would pull out their hammocks as Facilities set up the outdoor dining tables. Even Sean Kingston was excited about warmer weather at Middlesbury. But we weren’t so excited about a chemistry test question referencing Nazi gas chambers, or a slave trade joke in a geology class. And before we could catch our breath, the invitation of Ryszard Legutko threw us in for another loop. Just like that, our junior spring, too, was marked by controversy. In moments like that one, I would dream of eating too much at the all-school barbecue, of milling around campus late at night during Nocturne, of throwing paper airplanes in BiHall, and of seeing President Patton’s adorable dogs. Sometimes I even missed the carillon chiming away for what sometimes feels like hours. But back to reality. We learned of Charles Murray 2.0 (technically 3.0) near the end of this past J-Term, and it suddenly felt like we were time-travelling back to our first year. But we were ready this time. Many of our peers had worked alongside the administration to revise the protest policy. We saw the creation of the Black Studies major and got to talk about the 1619 project with Nikole Hannah-Jones. We mobilized in a way that recognized the past and looked to the future. And of course, just when we thought we could handle everything that came our way, Covid-19 forced us to abruptly leave behind everything we knew and held dear. There’s no denying that we’ve been dealt a pretty sh*tty hand. Yet somehow, despite it all, we’ve made the most of our time at Midd —our response to the pandemic is proof. In just a few days, we developed an abridged Senior Week, cheekily hung up crush lists and took a good look at that beautiful Middlebury sunrise one last time. These are the things that shape who we are, seniors, and I don’t want you to forget it. I want you to remember just how excited you were when you first got here, and I want you to take a deep breath and celebrate the fact that you’re almost done. Maybe we don’t get to walk down the stage in a cap and gown come May, but our accomplishment is so much bigger than that because we’re true Midd Kids: quirky and resilient, no matter what life throws at us. And when it comes down to it, that is what we will be remembered for. I love you so much, class of 2019.75. Maybe we’ll be reunited someday. Varsha Vijayakumar is a member of the class of 2020 and this year’s SGA president.
College is an exciting three-and-three-quarters to four years for the raging hormone machines we call our bodies. It can also be a time of great angst and confusion. While many of us are simply looking for love, our college environment can sometimes lead us to act in ways that are ultimately counterproductive and harmful to those around us. This moment of social isolation has given us space from our peers — an opportunity to reflect critically on sex and romance in our college community. Okay, now that that’s over with, let’s talk about how to get laid at Middlebury! Never text first. If you get somebody’s number, always wait for them to text you. Otherwise, you’ll come off as “creepy” and “interested” and “having emotions.” Yuck! And, if you both wait so long for the other person to text that you never actually talk — eventually pretending not to know each other in the Proc panini line — it’s for the best. You don’t want to be with somebody who isn’t cool enough to pretend they don’t have feelings. Only flirt with someone if you’re drunk. That way, you can avoid taking any personal responsibility for your emotions. Plus, if you get rejected, it doesn’t count! You were drunk, you didn’t really care anyways. Use Tinder to see who’s into you and then never talk to them in person. This way, you can reap the benefits of knowing you’re desirable without the bothersome encumbrance of putting your self-image on the line. You would talk to them, but you’re not that interested. Like, you’d go on a date with them, but you don’t want to make it weird, you know? Since Middlebury is so small, you’ll get the extra perk of learning first-hand what cognitive dissonance feels like every time you see that person on campus. Be hot, or rich enough to pretend you’re hot. As long as you’re attractive, or rich enough to pretend, the emotions of others don’t exist. So go for it: treat that person like sh*t and don’t let it trouble your beautiful, effortlessly-manicured confidence. Isn’t being better than everyone great? Always string someone along, just in case. If it doesn’t work out with the person you were really trying to get with, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got somebody on deck to fill the gaping hole in your ego. It doesn’t matter if you actually like this person (it’s actually better if you don’t) because after one or two nights, you’ll be on to bigger and better things. Remember: Manipulating others in order to console yourself is the highest form of self-care! Ghosting people is cool. At one time or another, we’ve all ghosted and been ghosted. Why bother breaking the cycle? Nobody’s ever gotten hurt. And finally … Always pretend you’re not interested. If you take away one thing from this piece, let it be this. Having strong, genuine feelings for other people is decidedly not cool, and it leaves you vulnerable to the undesirable disruption of your personal fantasies and false self-confidence. Curate a disinterested but vaguely flirtatious persona, and then put it on so much that you eventually forget what it’s like to experience any semblance of authentic, life-affirming emotion. Deadening your inner self is hardly a high price to pay for the luxury of avoiding any kind of sexual or romantic rejection! As the saying goes, Virginia is for lovers and Middlebury is for pretending not to have feelings. Will O’Neal is a member of the class of 2020.
Each May, graduating seniors plaster the bulletin boards at the entrance of Proctor Dining Hall with so-called “Proc Crush Lists” — posters ranging from simple printed lists to elaborate craft projects, emblazoned with names of the creators’ crushes from their years at Middlebury. Proc Crush Lists originated in 2005, when the tradition was brought to campus by then-senior Jason Lockhart ’05. Crush lists, originally intended to be written lists of romantic interests students had developed from their first year onward, have evolved to include lists of platonic love and appreciation. A tradition Lockhart experienced as a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York inspired his desire to create the first crush lists. During his final year at Middlebury, he joined the Senior Committee, and while his peers planned the classic 100 Days party and Senior Week, Lockhart had one main goal: bringing crush lists to Midd. Armed with the emails of every senior, Lockhart introduced the idea to his classmates, and then hung a long, large sheet of paper between two columns in Ross Dining Hall — yes, Ross — where students could post their lists. He started by hanging lists solicited from friends, around 30 or 40, and provided paper and pens so that students could create their own on the spot. Initially, the display was intended to last only one day. But Lockhart’s friends encouraged him to leave the lists up indefinitely, and the collection eventually grew to around 100. “It was a minor success,” Lockhart said. The first year of crush lists elicited some drama: a friend of Lockhart’s put 200 people on his crush list, prompting the creation of the Facebook group, “I’m on John Parker’s* Crush List and I Don’t Feel Special,” and later the follow-up group, “I’m not on John Parker’s Crush List So What Does That Say About Me?”. Lockhart graduated, and had nearly forgotten the lists until the following spring, when a friend who hadn’t yet graduated sent him a message: “You’d never believe it, the crush lists are back!” along with a picture of a new set of lists. The lists have been a fixture at Middlebury ever since, although their location, content and style have all evolved over the past 15 years. Some of the lists have been archived by Special Collections, although they are not publicly available due to privacy concerns. Initially located in Ross, crush lists have moved locations a few times over the years, sometimes split between Ross and Proctor; sometimes in Atwater, according to Lockhart; and now at their current home on the Proctor bulletin boards. Seniors over the years have certainly raised the bar when it comes to crush list creativity. Now, they come in the form of Spotify playlists (with names as song titles), QR codes, athletics rosters, maps and more. They also exhibit a mix of intentions. While some students lean into the “crush” aspect, sometimes even including their phone numbers, others use the forum to list friends, professors, organizations or peers for whom they want to express appreciation. Most end up creating a hybrid of the two. Others jump further outside the box, like Taite Shomo ’20.5, who posted a list this spring titled “List of Places I’ve Cried at Middlebury College: 2017–Present.” This spring, as students were informed that they had just three days to evacuate the college due to Covid-19 concerns, the tradition appeared to be at risk. As seniors and senior Febs rushed to create their lists before a premature departure, a miscommunication about where lists could hang resulted in their removal from the Proctor bulletin boards. However, a March 11 email from SGA president Varsha Vijayakumar ’20 clarified the situation. Even in the complicated hurry to leave campus, the crush lists persisted. Not every student is an advocate for the lists. Last year, our Sex Panther columnist addressed some of the concerns with the practice, like the power dynamics of seniors listing mostly younger students and the publicness of the lists that some may find uncomfortable. In 2016, a student tore down many of the lists and posted a manifesto in their place, denouncing the practice as predatory, according to one student who graduated that year. The lists seem to invite a short fling or hook-up (or series of hook-ups) during the final days of college. But can crush lists help find long-lasting love? The fact that they crop up only in the final moments of a senior’s time at Middlebury means, probably not. But for some, like Harry Cramer ’16.5 and Masami Cookson ’17, the lists were the catalyst of a long-term relationship. Cramer had seen Cookson at a couple of parties and they had some brief conversations, but they traveled in different circles: Cramer was involved in a cappella and was a Local editor on The Campus; Cookson was on the swim team. “I decided, What the hell, I’ll add her to my list,” Cramer said. A mutual friend saw the list, asked if she could put the two of them in touch, and they went on a date shortly after. “We got lunch outside of Proc,” Cramer said, “I remember that I had just come from frisbee practice, so I was all sweaty.” They went on a couple more dates after that and when they returned in the fall (Cramer was only a senior Feb when he hung up his list) began dating. When they first formally met, having hardly talked before, things were a little awkward. But Cramer appreciated how a crush lists had pushed him to get to know somebody outside of his social circle. “People at Midd tend to get stuck in their social bubbles too much, and it was nice to interact with Masami because the fact that we didn’t have a lot in common was refreshing,” Cramer said. “A lot of people get to their senior year and fall into the same routines, always talk to the same people: Proc Crush Lists can be a good way to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise interact with.” The couple have been together for nearly four years, and now live together in Washington, D.C. As for Lockhart, love wasn’t in the cards in the inaugural crush lists season. However, today he is engaged, and had planned to get married in May, although social distancing and restrictions on gatherings have put off the wedding for a bit. Lockhart still keeps up with the crush lists, looks forward to seeing them at reunions and appreciates that the tradition appears to be a permanent fixture at the college. * Denotes pseudonym Editor in chief Sabine Poux ’20 contributed reporting.
The more I reflect on my four years at Middlebury, the more I am overwhelmed by how much love I felt for my friends and how loved by them I felt in return. In honor of this week’s Love Issue, I reached out to a few senior friends and asked them to answer a couple questions: how they defined love at Middlebury, if there was anything they wish they had realized sooner or done differently with regard to love during college, and when they felt most loved at Middlebury. When I reflect on those questions, I always gravitate towards two moments. The first was during the last week of my junior fall, when I was living in Palmer. One night, my friends congregated in the suite across the hall from ours, about 15 people were seated around the room in a loose circle, on the floor, on top of desks and on chairs we had crammed into the suite. One friend, splayed on one of the room’s two twin beds and with a beer in his hand, was receiving a stick-and-poke on the back of his calf. Conversation zipped by and around me as I sat on a lofted bed, next to a best friend and a more-than-a-friend. I felt like I was being held in place by the threads that wove around the room, in between people, across my lap and through my two shoulders. It was quintessentially, even obscenely college-esque; still, it remains one of the best nights from the last four years. The second moment that comes to mind is from the last week of my senior year. On Wednesday, the day following the announcement of our untimely departure from campus, my friends and I rallied for a 4 p.m. Mad Taco salute. Over margaritas and overpriced but decent Mexican food, my six closest friends and I tried to come to terms with what it meant to say goodbye to Middlebury, well before any of us felt ready to leave it behind. When I asked everyone to remember when at Midd they had laughed the hardest, we were left in hysterics remembering all of the famous and infamous moments of pure, belly-shaking, tear-inducing laughter we’d had over the years. Someone once observed that my friends and I are always laughing; until then, though, I never realized just how apt that description was. Right then, as we felt our collective chapter at Middlebury closing, I felt unmistakably, completely loved. That moment with my friends is one of hundreds that I can think of where I felt completely loved, but this one just happens to be my favorite memory of a chapter closing. If nothing else, college helped me understand how I love. I guess that is how I define love at Middlebury: putting aside your time and stress to take a moment to care for someone else, whether that is making them a cookie, or just taking the time to be quiet and present together. In my experience, I have felt the most love in quiet, routine moments: mornings in bed with someone, homework in the library, rambunctious lunches in Atwater and prolonged dinners on the Proctor terrace. I wish I had realized sooner that these small moments of love would be what I would carry with me after I left Middlebury, but I am so grateful to always carry them with me. Without further ado, here is how people responded to my prompts. When asked how they define love at Midd, they answered: For me, love at Middlebury is defined by my incredibly kind, smart, funny, thoughtful, perceptive closest friends who, after four years, are like an extension of myself. I wish everyone at Midd the same deep-rooted, immutable happiness of knowing, beyond all doubt, that you’ve found your people. I still can’t really believe that we all ended up here together— what are the odds? That infamous Middlebury statistic proved true for me: here, I found my soulmates. I define love at Middlebury the same way I define it everywhere: an intangible sentiment that draws us to people indefinitely in both romantic and platonic contexts. A meaningful and fulfilling connection between two people that allows each individual to bring out the best in themselves. In essence, love is when two (or potentially more) people come together and are more than just the sum of their parts. I would actually say in my time at Middlebury I have more often come to love someone or some group in a non-romantic way than in a platonic way. When asked what they wished they had done differently or realized sooner, they answered: At several points, I remember saying to friends, “There’s just no one left here that I’d be interested in dating.” Of course, that never turned out to be true, and a week or two later I’d meet someone great who I never knew existed. I wish I had had more faith in the dating pool at Middlebury. It’s a cliche, but when it feels like you’ve exhausted your options, do try to keep an open mind— you truly never know who you’ll hit it off with. I was single for a lot of Middlebury and for some reason I always felt this kind of guilt. I knew hookup culture wasn't ideal, but I always felt bad for getting into brief one-to-two month relationships, only to bail out before it got really serious. Now that I'm really happy in a relationship, I see how stupid that mentality was; unless things really feel right, its pointless to feel guilty about not wanting to commit to something, as long as you communicate with the "other" partners ahead of time. I wish I hadn't felt so rushed to find a long-term romantic partner. This had little to do with Middlebury itself, but I came into college on the back of a long-term relationship, and the only kind of relationship I was interested in was one where I could fill that deep void I had for a very close romantic partner. I think I missed a lot of the growth and learning associated with more casual dating and romantic encounters, and I wish looking back I hadn't been so concerned with something you ultimately cannot force. It either happens or it doesn't, and I shouldn't have been so caught up in it all. When asked about when they felt the most loved at Middlebury, they responded: One friend would make me soup whenever she noticed I was sad. There is no sadness that cannot be eased (at least in part) by a cup of hot, homemade soup. I think it was after I went to Nationals this senior year, and all my friends were hitting me with a slew of supporting messages, asking me how it went. It showed me how much they care and it hit me in a really special place. The moment I felt most loved at Middlebury, though there have been many other instances where I've felt loved as well, was on a day of no particular importance. I had been feeling a bit down on my luck for a variety of reasons, and I had gotten through the week just putting my head down, not saying anything to anyone else, and keeping all that sadness to myself. I didn't think anyone would really notice, but that Friday morning when I walked into the dining hall, someone had thought to bake me a batch of cookies because they thought it would be a pleasant surprise and make me happy. I highly doubt they knew I was having a rough week, but the reminder that there are people out there, and especially my friends, who do genuinely care about me, changed my entire week. Sometimes it's the smallest acts of kindness that go the farthest. I still have the ribbon that tied that bag of cookies shut to this day.
First-years’ identities are inevitably tied to the dorms they live in — Allen, Battell, Ross and Stewart — where neighbors forge friendships. These relationships, generated by proximity, often become the support systems that carry students through the transition to college life. Yet they are sometimes the least expected friendships. Emma Wheeler ’23 and Emma McKee ’23 are hallmates in Battell. Recalling the first time they met each other over lunch, both admitted that the connection was not immediate. “I was so uncomfortable that I’m pretty sure I didn’t speak at all,” Wheeler said. “For some reason, I had this false assumption that I wouldn’t end up being best friends with my hallmates.” Orientation offers first-years many opportunities to interact with their hallmates through Commons-based activities. Through workshops, which are designed to build relationships and push students out of their comfort zones, first-years are often constantly around the same people. Ella Jones '23 lives in Hadley Hall and her core group of friends consists of her roommate, suitemates and a few hallmates. She traced the roots of these friendships to her first weeks at Middlebury. “It is just so convenient. Going down to meals with people, hanging out after class, it all becomes easier the closer together you live,” Jones said. McKee described the pressure first-years feel to go everywhere in packs during orientation.“It’s comfortable to have a group of friends right away, even if you’re not going to stay friends with them forever, just so you feel less alone,” McKee said. But as first-years become more integrated into the rest of the college community, they often seek ways to branch out. Clubs, classes and parties all become important vehicles for social interaction. Wheeler and McKee both became part of the water polo team. The team gave them a passion for the sport — and a new group of friends. “I feel a close sisterhood with my waterpolo gals and guys,” Wheeler said. “And I feel like I’ve also met so many amazing people through my water polo friends.” While students have agency to find and choose their friends, placements of first-years in dorms and halls is arbitrary. Friends by proximity are a testament to a combination of chance and fate that becomes the perfect recipe for human relationships. “There are so many people on campus, and I think there are a lot of people that I am compatible with enough to form a friendship,” Wheeler said. “But it takes the combination of being compatible and having a shared experience to bond over.” Three years later For some students, these “proximity friends” carry them through all four years of college. As a first-year, Jack Kagan ’20 lived in the basement in Allen. He was not close with the other students on his floor, but a friend from high school looped him into his floor in Hadley. The floor was close, and many of the students who lived there have remained in a tight-knit friend group. “We all got along so well and I'll never be able to thank those people enough for being so open to me, letting me crash on their floors and their couches, and being true friends,” Kagan wrote in an email to The Campus. For Kagan, the keys to these friendships lasting through the ups and downs of college life were openness and humor. Even when the people in his friend group do not see each other for a while, they always pick up where they left off when they get back together. His group of friends has expanded over the years, collecting new people and remaining open to new friendships, ideas and activities. “I think we can always have fun together and joke around together and that's when we're at our happiest. We all would be so happy to just sit in a room and talk and just laugh,” he wrote. Kagan, who does not identify as outgoing, considers himself lucky to have found the people he now considers some of his closest friends so early on. “I think the lesson out of this is, freshman year, you really have to push hard to leave any expectations of college at the door. You have to try not to blame yourself or anything for your situation,” he wrote. “You have to trust that it will work out if you try to do what makes you happy because you'll find those people doing the same thing.” The Sophomore Shuffle As MiddKids return to campus for their sophomore years, they often observe shifts in their friendships. With a year of college under their belts, many sophomores discover that they have a greater sense of self-confidence and familiarity with themselves and their surroundings, as well as a better understanding of what they care about most. Daily routines adapt as they delve deeper into their academic specialties and dedicate themselves to a handful of extracurriculars. These factors can all shape the changing landscape of existing — and developing — friendships. Gracey Carroll ’22 believes that college friendships are more fluid than commonly thought. “I think a common myth about college friendships is that you have one circle of friends,” she wrote. “I don’t know anyone who has that! I have my roommates, my Model UN friends, my Radio Theatre friends and friends from classes.” Carroll explained that she made fewer new friends this year than she did last year and is no longer as close with some of her first-year friends. Instead, she opted to strengthen her existing relationships. “There were a few people I was very close with last year that I don’t talk to as much anymore,” she wrote. “I think part of it was that Battell got separated into Gifford and Pearsons, but I also realized at some point that I just didn’t like some of the people I’d grown attached to.” New activities, new friends While first-year relationships are decided by proximity, sophomore connections are often based on common interests. Claire Moy ’22 expanded her social circles in her sophomore year while also prioritizing certain extracurriculars. “Like a lot of MiddKids, I joined so many orgs my freshman fall that I barely had time to attend any of them,” she wrote in a message to The Campus. “This year, I dedicated more time to my extracurriculars like ISO and Riddim, took on leadership roles and was just more confident, which helped me to reach out and really get to know people.” This increased confidence also helped her connect with her peers outside of class. “As I took higher-level courses in Economics, I found I was spending a lot more time with more of the same people,” she wrote. “It was an incentive to get to know them and hang out outside of class.” Moy explained that, although she made several new friends this year, her main friend group from her first-year hall hasn’t changed much. “Sophomore year definitely solidified this friend group, while expanding my network to include really diverse-thinking and interesting people,” she wrote. Justin Cooper ’22 reflected on the role of confidence in his personal relationships. Like Moy, he found that his first-year friendships strengthened after returning to campus in the fall. “I think what really allows us to both solidify and expand our social circles in sophomore year is confidence and comfort on campus,” he wrote. “With these as the building blocks for the sentiment coming back to a now-familiar place and lifestyle, it is easier to reach out to someone you wouldn’t have before or to spend your time with your friends how you please.” Long distance friendships The transition to distance learning strained social life at Midd for students and clubs alike. Michael Simons ’22.5 said he finds it challenging to build and maintain connections from a distance. “I’ve tried to keep my relationships going, but it seems hard to build new friendships over Zoom,” he wrote. “I’m not connecting as regularly because everyone has busy schedules and it’s a lot harder to plan meetings when we live in different parts of the country and have changing family and work responsibilities.” Like many other students, Simons began to branch out from his main group of friends in his second semester. He said that while he enjoyed having a group of Febs that he could reach out to at any time, it isn’t until the fall that many Febs start to meet new people. Simons chose to live in Weybridge House and joined the sailing team this fall in order to broaden his network of friends. He has also been a member of Community Friends since his first semester and currently serves as a community coordinator. “Joining the coordinator team was a great way to meet a kind, sincere group of friends,” he said. “It was nice having a friend group centered around giving back to the community.” For now, Simons is staying connected through snail mail. “Writing lots of letters and postcards to friends is the biggest thing that I’m doing to stay connected,” he wrote. Carroll acknowledges the difficulty of constantly saying goodbye to familiar faces at the end of each semester. "Middlebury is a revolving door of new people," she wrote. "Given the Feb program and the popularity of study abroad, I always feel like I am saying goodbye to someone and hello to someone else." However, she remains optimistic about her next two years at Middlebury. “While the constant change can be challenging, I welcome the opportunity to maximize my pool of wonderfully diverse and ever-transforming friendships!” she wrote. Editor's Note: Jack Kagan ’20 is a sports editor for The Campus.
With Middlebury students now scattered across the globe, many have found themselves in long distance romantic relationships they had not planned for. Following the evacuation of campus in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, students had to make quick and unexpected decisions about their relationships. While some of these students already had experience with distance dating, the announcement to leave campus came suddenly and threw many students for a loop. Katelyn Mei ’22 has been dating her boyfriend, Cater Wang ’21, for over a year. The couple dated long distance last summer. Still, the new challenges brought about by the sudden evacuation of campus took the couple by surprise. “There was definitely a shock to [realizing] we weren’t going to see each other for half a year,” Mei said. “It was like, ‘We have four days we need to spend together, now.’” Wang, who is still on campus, is an international student from China. For now, they are both in the same time zone, with Wang in Vermont and Mei at her home in Brooklyn. But Wang will return home in May, placing a 12-hour time difference — and thousands of miles — between them. Mei said she’s worried about when Wang returns to China. “There’s definitely a day’s delay of conversation unless we make time to meet each other [over] FaceTime,” she said regarding the time difference. “At least I have this person [who] I can share my emotions and my feelings [with].” [pullquote speaker="Katelyn Mei ’22" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]There was definitely a shock to [realizing] we weren’t going to see each other for half a year,” Mei said. “It was like, ‘We have four days we need to spend together, now.’[/pullquote] Will Hoppin ’22 from Mill Valley, California is dating Chloe Zinn ’22 who lives in South Hero, Vt. “Vermont is a much different place than California and [Chloe] is a much more humble person and a much more caring person,” Hoppin said. He noted that his Bay Area private high school, on the other hand, fostered a culture of elitism and narcissism. “It’s so refreshing to be around someone who’s so genuinely present and caring, and I think I have a lot to learn from her.” Hoppin and Zinn now sit on opposite sides of the country. “I was at her house for a week before I decided to go home,” he said. “That was a really hard decision to make because [I had to decide,] do I want to be with my girlfriend — her family was really excited about me staying there — or with my family?” He said that while he is “at peace” with his decision to go home, he misses Zinn greatly. “I’m not going to see her until August, if things keep going this way,” he said. “We have plans for her to come out to California if she doesn’t have a summer job that’s in-person, but it’s scary to be like, ‘I’m not going to see this person that’s so important to me.’” Maeve Callahan ’22 expressed similar concerns. “It’s definitely a bit more of a roller coaster,” she said regarding hopes to see boyfriend Jose Morales ’22. “Some days I think, ‘yes, I am going to road trip as soon as classes are done.’” But other days, she feels nervous about making the 27-hour-journey from her home in Massachusetts to Dallas, Texas, where Morales lives. “I don’t want to endanger people if I go on a road trip, I still have to get gas and I still have to eat,” she said. Nick Wagg ’22 decided to stop waiting and travelled from Maine to Minnesota on April 16 to be with girlfriend Elsa Soderstrom ’22. Wagg, who arrived in Minnesota on April 16, decided to follow Soderstrom after a few weeks at home. “I felt I wasn’t totally understood at home,” he said. “I was seeking some type of normalcy of what college was like and I felt that coming [to Minnesota] would feel a little more like how things were.” Wagg said that he ultimately decided to make the flight because of the indefinite nature of the situation. “We’ve had to deal with distance before, but what was different about this time was not knowing when we’d be able to see each other again,” he said. “This time there was no light at the end of the tunnel.” While Wagg and Soderstrom are together in Minnesota, Matt Fliegauf ’22 is still waiting until he can safely head to South Carolina to see his girlfriend Raeanne Smith ’22. “I’m going to head down to South Carolina as soon as it’s safe, but we don’t know when that’s going to be,” Fliegauf said. “I can’t put myself in a situation where I’m threatening either my health or her health or her family’s health.” Fliegauf and Smith recently celebrated their one year anniversary over FaceTime. “[Celebrating our anniversary] was tough,” Fliegauf said. “We knew that it was going to be spent apart, but it was really hard to have such a significant anniversary so far apart.” But he has enjoyed the opportunity for them to have longer conversations together since heading home. “At school … you don’t have the chance to just sit down and have a long conversation,” Fliegauf said. “I think that this has given us a little more time to just sit and talk, which I really appreciate.” In addition to long FaceTime conversations, Fliegauf said that he and Smith frequently have movie nights together. “Netflix party has been a blessing,” he said. “We’ve been watching ‘Tiger King’ together.” [pullquote speaker="Matt Fliegauf ’22" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]At school … you don’t have the chance to just sit down and have a long conversation,” Fliegauf said. “I think that this has given us a little more time to just sit and talk, which I really appreciate.[/pullquote] Despite their distaste for technology, Madison Middleton ’22.5 and Sean Lovett ’22.5 have also found using Zoom and FaceTime necessary since leaving campus. “Even though I hate FaceTime, I hate not seeing Mads more than I hate FaceTime,” Lovett said. For Middleton and Lovett, quarantine has been particularly unusual, as they both live in the D.C. area. “We’re lucky in that we live only a 45-minute drive from each other at home, but since we can’t leave home, it’s become difficult,” Middleton said. “My routine with seeing [Sean] has changed.” Instead of seeing each other a couple times a week as they usually do when they are home, Middleton and Lovett have not been together in person in over three weeks. “It’s torture. It doesn’t feel right at all because part of my natural inclination at home is to go visit Sean and his family,” Middleton said. Lovett agreed, but said that he is glad that they are not too far apart. “I have been in a long distance relationship before — both across the country and on another continent — and I feel a lot more secure having Madison so close,” Lovett said. “We’re not able to see each other, but being only 25 miles away is really reassuring.”